Nutrition Analysis

        During the Falcon Market activity and Supertracker assignment, I (re)learned the major food groups and the nutrients present in each. I now know to stay away from trans fats, or also known as hydrogenated fats, as they increase the risk of heart disease. I was able to reevaluate my diet, according to what the Supertracker website had limited me to, but I still feel that, with the physical activity I do and my rate of metabolism, the calorie limit per day is a little low. I was, on two out of the three days recorded on Supertracker, far exceeding my recommended limit for sodium intake, and this makes sense, as I seem to feel a little more thirsty the days I consume salty, or high sodium-content foods. To remedy this problem of sodium, I could try to ask my parents to put less sauce in home-made foods, or just tell them that I will add the sauce (the main source of sodium) into the food myself, to monitor and regulate my sodium balance. Also, I find myself lacking in vegetables. This can easily be rectified, through, with a side of salad or cucumbers to each meal, and is easily found in asian markets. If I were to pose as a dietician or the like, I would probably advise them to look carefully at ingredient labels, as I've learned that foods with less than one gram of trans(hydrogenated) fats are allowed to round down on the nutrition labels, but still are required to state it in the ingredients and manufacturing list.

9/16

9/15

9/17

What is "Health"?

         Through all of the information my brain sifts through each day, there are buried pieces of my own failure to maintain my well being, transmitted as pangs of pain, bouts of weakness, and an unfocused mind. I assume that these symptoms result from not sleeping enough each night, having more stress than normal placed upon my shoulders, and not eating right. I exhibit, though, plenty of social activity and exercise, mostly because of school-related activities. I would prefer to know more about health in general, but also the side effects and plainly visible symptoms of deprivation of each pillar so that it can be indicated to me.

Unit 1 Reflection

        Unit 1 was about the underlying structure of the anatomy physiology course, with terms classifying sections of the body with also some focus on general tissues and molecular structure.
The main, overarching themes of this unit were the optimization of structure for function; how our bodies' cells specialized into different tissues and, thus, organ systems to maintain homeostasis; and the four macromolecules inside us and other living things.

I was able to understand and review terms from some other science classes (Biology, Chemistry) and also learn more about how, where, and why my body has specific tissues, for example, the lining of my stomach, and also identify and describe them.

I still have a few questions about the structure of cartilage as it was only briefly talked about in the notes and I was not able to find any samples of it during the tissue lab. Also, I am interested in compact bone tissue, as it has a unique structure that is not explained on the poster, but I expect to get to it in a later chapter/unit.

During the next unit I hope to be able to draw more connections to the lab while working in the classroom, as I had to take it home and review terms to fully understand the things I was looking at through the microscope.

During this unit, I actually was inspired to research- on my own- the specifics of taste, not just the taste buds on the tongue (during the sweetness lab of course) and how their placement and number were correlated to one's genes. The edges of the tongue are actually the most taste receptive, with the little spots on its surface being the taste receptor sites.

Tissue Lab Relate and Review

         This lab was mostly a review lab for me, mostly reaffirming my knowledge (just in time for the unit 1 test), while also going a little bit more in depth than the cursory descriptive terms, such as squamous, cuboidal, columnar, stratification, and physical characteristics like nucleus count. Instead, using the slide names and posters, seeing which tissue structures were in each different regions or organs of the body allowed me to further understand the relations between the structure and function of the cell arrangements. For example, the connective tissue in the form of red and white blood cells on the "blood smear; human" sample revealed small, but circular red blood cells to create the most volume out of limited surface area and optimize the supply of oxygen moving around the bloodstream. In contrast, the slightly larger white blood cells were few and far between, but contained a visible dyed nucleus, showing its efficiency (with its large size) to engulf viruses and bacteria and use its nucleus to create immune cells. While connective blood cell tissue is spread apart between its cells, other tissues, especially the "stratified columnar epithelium; human" sample and the "human skeletal muscle" sample have little to no palpable space between cells, and thus confining the extra-cellular matrix to quick transport between cells and collagen fibers to strengthen the tissue's shape.